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Puff Paste and Cheese

A puff pastry filled with cheese, folded and baked into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puff Paste and Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a warm place, mix baking powder into the flour.

  2. Cut the butter into the flour until well combined.

  3. Roll out the dough and fold it twice, incorporating all the butter.

Add the cheese and fold

  1. Spread grated cheese evenly over the rolled-out dough using a palette knife.

  2. Fold and roll out the dough again, spreading cheese on top once more.

  3. Repeat the folding and rolling process until you have folded it 5 times.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough out thin and cut into squares about 2½ inches wide.

  2. Fold each square over to form a pocket, brush with beaten egg, and bake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the layered dough together.
Unsalted butter
Creates flaky layers as it stays solid between sheets of dough and steams in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and become light.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness between the dough layers.
Egg
Brushed on as an egg wash, it promotes browning and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Incorporating all the butter during folding. Butter must stay in distinct layers between dough sheets. If it warms and softens, it blends into the flour, and the pastry loses its flakiness. Keeping the dough cool between folds helps the layers hold.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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